


you used to wear newspaper in your shoes

by RooWanders



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Civil War Trailer, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 10:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5286410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RooWanders/pseuds/RooWanders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Buck, do you remember me?”<br/>“Your mom's name was Sarah. You used to wear newspaper in your shoes.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	you used to wear newspaper in your shoes

“Buck, do you remember me?” The question feels all wrong. Bucky had to remember him. It was always them, running around Brooklyn and wreaking havoc. But then he died. And then he wasn’t dead but he didn’t remember him and Steve broke. He fucking broke because Bucky was the only solid thing he’d ever known. When he died Steve was destroyed. All he cared about was ending the war and getting the thought of blue Brooklyn eyes and trains and the screams out of his head. 

Sam and him had spent months desperately trying to find him. They hadn’t expected to find him here, in a shitty empty warehouse in downtown Berlin. Bucky was looking at them, exhausted. There was something so broken about him, and Steve wanted to reach out, and tell him that everything was going to be fine. But that was a lie. 

“Your moms name was Sarah. You used to wear newspaper in your shoes.”

 

Suddenly Steve is 9 years old. Bucky’s dad has just died and things have been so sad lately, with funeral preparations and the cold wet rain thats been glooming over the city. But they are 9 year old boys, and no 9 year old boy can be committed to being permanently in despair.

They’re staying at Steve’s moms house while Bucky’s mom is getting together the funeral. They’re so poor and they can’t afford to get an actual flower arrangement. So it consists of whatever the church will give them, lily and hydrangeas mostly. The two boys don’t know that they’re poor. Everyone on their street ate stale bread and canned beans from the food bank, so they just thought it was normal. 

It’s way past their bed time but they were too giddy, the newspaper they’d stolen from the trash predicted snow tonight. The two boys pretended to sleep for almost hours, occasionally whispering things like “I’m gonna throw so many snowballs at you” and “Yea, well my snowman is going to be bigger than yours”. When they could hear Sarah settle down to sleep, they made their escape. 

Slinking down the hallway, pretending to be spies and being dangerously quiet. They reached the apartment doorway and started giggling uncontrollably. They’d never done anything so dangerous. Bucky hoisted Steve onto his shoulders to look in the peep hole. Steve gasped. The snow was falling so delicately, large white puffs floating down from the heavens. 

“What? Is there snow?” Bucky whispered loudly, bringing Steve to the ground carefully. 

“Oh yea Buck. It’s practically the north pole out there.” He smiled and grabbed his boots and sat down onto the floor, shoving his bare feet in, flinching at the cold. 

“You’ve gotta wear socks Stevie, it’s cold out there and you’ll get sick.” Bucky plopped down beside him and took his socks off, handing them to Steve. 

“But you might get sick too.” he whined. Bucky was always like this, trying to look out for him but never realising that he was hurting himself in the process. 

“Shh no I’ll be fine. And those socks have a gazillion holes in them.” Bucky got up suddenly, running down the hallway, his bare feet slapping against the cold tile. Steve wriggled his toes in the black socks, sticking his pinkie toe through one of the holes.

When he returned he had the newspaper they’d stolen from the garbage. 

“Here you go, my dad did this for us kids every time we’d go out to build snowmen.” He smiled through his missing front tooth. Bucky shoved the newspaper containing his fathers obituary notice and the weather report and the Sunday comics into Steve’s church charity boots. 

“What about you, Buck?” he asked. Bucky had used all the newspaper in his boots.

“I’m not the one who has asthma.”

“That’s not fair and honestly I only got pneumonia one time-“

“Come on, Steve, the snow’s gonna melt before you convince me that I need to be warmer than you.” 

Steve looked at Bucky incredulously. He hated it when someone said that he was weak. Steve Rogers was not weak. Sure he was sick all the time and his rib cage poked dangerously through his skin, but Steve Rogers was not weak. He was going to save the world one day. 

The boys threw on their sweaters in silence, before carefully opening the door and escaping into the cold. 

Their breath made clouds and they both grinned, all thoughts of dead fathers and absent fathers and the fact that there was one can of corn in the cupboard and pneumonia because the heater was broken disappeared. And it was just them. Out in the snow and young and they didn’t know what was coming, but god how could they. 

The boys ran down the apartment steps, the snow landing in their bed head. The street lights the only thing illuminating the small street. They both looked around in awe. The moon and stars had come out to greet them. It was beautiful and both boys started laughing. 

Balls of snow flew through the air above them, hitting them both in the face. Up on the balcony was Sarah, the porch light illuminating her short blonde hair in a halo. 

“You boys are supposed to be asleep.” She laughed, smiling at the two of them. 

Then they were all laughing in the dim light. Snow was resting in their eyelashes and their hair and everything was okay in that moment. 

“Stevie, you better be bundled up tight. It’s a chilly one tonight and I don’t want to spend any more time in the hospital.” She smiled sweetly, knowing that Bucky had taken care of it. 

“Yep, I am Mom! I’m wearing socks and everything!” He told her, glancing at Bucky with a silent thank you.

“Okay, then I’ll leave you boys to your shenanigans.” She laughed again, high and sweet like an angel, a voice Steve didn’t realise he would miss so damn much. She turned to the apartment and was promptly was bombarded by an onslaught of fresh snowballs. 

“That’s it you goons.” Sarah laughed once again and ran down the ice covered stairs to the two boys. They were still throwing snow balls as fast as their small 9 year old arms could. She was pelting them too, laughing under the moon and stars and snow falling from the Brooklyn sky. 

Steve’s mom died four years later from the same pneumonia that had almost taken Steve so many times. He moved in with Bucky’s family and every day on the first snowfall they’d go out in the middle of the night, trying to feel her in cold breaths and snowball fights. Steve kept wearing newspaper in his shoes.

 

But now they were in 2015. And everyone from back then is dead. And they’re the only ones left and god damn it Bucky was in trouble. He lay on the ground, covered in grime and blood and god knows what. Steve would save him. Hell he’d do anything for him. Just to be able to see him and know that someone remembered Brooklyn nights covered with snow and the squishing of newspaper shoes. And because he missed him, damn did he miss him. 

He was different now, all hard and broken and metal. But there he was, laying on the ground with the same Brooklyn blue eyes as when they were nine year old boys.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is the first fic I'm posting on here so I hope you like it! Also a big thanks to supremesippycup.tumblr.com for being the most incredible beta!!


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